I got up before five this morning, well to be truly honest, it was 4:30. Why? I was awake and there was this faint gloaming of light coming through the window. Everyone was still sleeping, as it should be. The house creaked as I walked barefoot into my computer room and retrieved my laptop. I wanted to find out if there was truly access to this site. Voilà, This site popped up.

The site went down on Friday as one of our visitors who has been helping me with my server brought me a new server setup. The idea was to move this old server into retirement, With all of my files for the website on my old server and the need to be sociable and play games, have family meals, and plain, old visiting on the agenda, in the end, we revived the old server and now run two servers. That move happened yesterday evening. Now, I am back online.

The first group left at five this morning as they have a long drive, about eleven hours of driving. The second group left at five-fifteen. They only had a six hour drive but were scheduled with an early afternoon meeting. The third group is still sleeping as they don’t have to leave that early. Before lunchtime, it will be just the two of us.

We had 15 visitors in our house for three days. Enormous quantities of food and beverages where consumed. Yard game, board games, card games, and telling stories from the past by our children, their children, and their mates ensured that no one was excluded. It is silent now as I wait for the two littlest of the visitors to wake up and fill the house with a final burst of enthusiastic noise.

The garage fridge with ice cream treats, freezies, and beverages is now basically empty. There is no question that everyone packed as much into these three days as they possibly could. And just for the record. There were no arguments. There were a few moments of the youngest getting upset with tears as the characters on his tablet were mean and kept killing him. A game of ladder golf, cornhole, or chase-the-ace was all the distraction he needed to be his normal, energetic, ball of energy.

We are exhausted. Next time it will be different. There will be more of us.